Marathon + Resource Spawner Overhaul victory

[Gus_Smedstad]

I recently launched a satellite while playing with the Marathon + Resource Spawner Overhaul mods. Took me ~170 hours, apparently.

The high copper cost of electronics and distance between ore fields forced me to build a large rail network. No possibility of finishing this using only belts!

Marathon rail network

Resource demand ran 2000-2500 copper ore / minute, and 1000-1500 iron ore per minute. I ended up building my first-ever central train station, with two double-sided platforms just to receive copper. Copper demand was such that a single blue belt couldn't supply the entire base - I ended up widening the main copper belt to two blue belts.

Train Station

I found the colored lights mod helpful to set up indicators showing the state of the boxes for the higher-demand platforms. That gave me some advance warning at a glance when either copper or iron was running low, and I needed to optimize train schedules, place more drills, or stake out an entirely new ore field. Prior to that, my first warning would usually be when the iron or copper bus would run dry for a few seconds.

I'm pretty happy with the central train station. It has a waiting area that can hold up to 5 trains, though I never saw more then 2 waiting at a time. The individual platforms are quite compact, much smaller than they'd be if they were independent stations. There's a separate area for my passenger train, which I kept fueled and loaded with extra walls and rails.

The copper area at the bottom is a little weird, because I built it to equalize track lengths. That turns out not to be necessary, when I re-enabled the obsolete original copper platform for testing, the trains had no difficulty finding the more distant platforms even when there was a train blocking the original platform, which had a shorter path length than the 2 new ones. Thus I could revise the track to eliminate the detour to the left.

Much of the rail network is single-track with passing blocks. The rail network is much, much bigger than anything I actually had to build in vanilla, and saving on track made sense. Besides, I wanted to explore an extensive single-track network, instead of my usual double-track network. This captured some of the feel of Railroad Tycoon, where placing passing blocks was a strategic decision. The high-traffic central area is all double track, but once rail leaves the core it's single track. It works surprisingly well, with relatively little waiting.

[orzelek]

Grats on the rocket. Really nice base

I do find marathon to be a bit to extreme - my normal playtrough with bob's mods and science cost upped is taking 40-50h. No idea how long it would be with marathon

[Boogieman14]

That is a great looking map. I've been contemplating doing a marathon game myself once I get bored with my current (bob's mods) map. I've been known to drag vanilla games into the 100+ hours range, wonder how long this will take me

[Gus_Smedstad]

For much of the game I was struggling to keep one Blue science pack assembler working continuously. At peak I had 3 running - but only because they had Productivity mods slowing them down to -60%.

The thing about Marathon is that Electronics are 10 copper ore (10 ore -> 50 plates -> 10 cable) and 8 seconds each to craft, 6.6x as much copper and 16x as long as vanilla. Much of my base was devoted to extensive Electronics factories. Cable making's slow too, so direct insertion of copper wire to electronics assemblers no longer makes sense, instead it's direct insertion of copper plates from a smelter into a cable assembler.

The main negatives, which I really think need to rebalanced, are than copper limits everything, so oil sources are largely unimportant, and modules are so hideously expensive that it's very, very unusual for them to make economic sense. Level-3 modules are 44,000 copper plates each, or 8,800 ore. Productivity-3 modules make sense for things like the rocket and blue science packs, but otherwise it's just speed-1 modules required by rocket control units and level-3 assemblers.

Alien eggs, er, artifacts end up being a non-issue. I had to clear so many biter nests off of ore I desperately needed that I had hundreds before I started my first Purple science project. The artifact costs of level-3 modules and power armor upgrades were also unimportant. That didn't bother me, because I never much cared for the segment of vanilla where I'm raiding alien nests just for that stuff. Having to clear nests for ore needs felt much more natural.

Still, it's worth playing with the combination at least once. It's refreshing to actually need to build a far-flung empire and a moderately serious central train station, instead of doing that sort of stuff just for fun long after launching the satellite.

[Ackos]

Love the massive rail network.

[Xterminator]

Very cool rail network. It always fascinates me seeing these massive rail systems people have.
Congrats on actually getting to the rocket stage and launching with marathon AND RSO enabled. Personally I think marathon makes things a bit too expensive, but it definitely makes for a challenge. Lol

[Gus_Smedstad]

Very cool rail network. It always fascinates me seeing these massive rail systems people have.

Yeah, me too, but the really big networks are usually post-victory. I generally lose interest at that point, so I appreciated the mod combination giving me a reason to make something much bigger than normal.

[safan]

did you use peaceful mode? About how much of the initial iron went into bullets?

[Gus_Smedstad]

No, I didn't play in Peaceful mode. That's a relevant question, because I almost gave up on the early stages a couple of times. The biters came after me when I had nothing more than a pistol, because Marathon makes research expensive and slow. I ended up having to let biters attack my stuff several times, because I could only survive if I could shoot them while they were busy destroying things. Getting turrets, getting walls,getting heavy armor, getting piercing rounds, and getting laser turrets were all important military stages.

It was definitely a lot more challenging than vanilla, both because I had rather less technology than normal, and because when my initial resources ran out, I had to clear biter nests to get more. In the case of iron, I had to run a fairly long rail line past nests I couldn't really handle to get to a weaker nest which was blocking iron.

How much of my initial iron went to ammunition, I don't know exactly. That was a long time ago. I was using it pretty much as fast as an assembler could make it, both the basic magazines and later the piercing rounds. I still used a lot of ammunition after I got laser technology, because it took a while before I had enough lasers to mount an offense, let along create a laser defense perimeter. Making laser turrets is slow in Marathon, both making the electronics they require, and the turrets themselves.

[Boogieman14]

I lucked out with a very defensible position

map

There's also some more iron and copper next to each other a bit to the southeast. Four hours in and I'm just starting my first green research item (beelining for solar panels)

[Gus_Smedstad]

Green research is difficult because you have to use electronics, and you have to re-learn electronics factories because the ratios are different than what you knew from before. It was a much bigger hurdle than I expected, and Blue never got easy.

I think it's genuinely possible to get into a no-win situation with Marathon if you exhaust your ores - copper in particular - before you've staked out your next source.

[Ackos]

Having big problems producing enough green circuits, and a huge biter zerg that just ruined my oil and chemical production isnt helping.

[Gus_Smedstad]

By the time I had oil up, the biters weren't getting through my defenses anymore - though I did have to drop everything to maintain them periodically. I ended up with banks of 8 turrets defending places they tended to assault. I couldn't afford that kind of turret density all along my wall, but the biters were pretty predictable about where they'd make the big pushes.

I was playing with standard settings aside from the mods. Can't say what it would have been like if I'd turned up the biters. Standard was hard enough as it was.

[Boogieman14]

Green research is difficult because you have to use electronics, and you have to re-learn electronics factories because the ratios are different than what you knew from before.

You said this before, but when I eyeballed the ratios, they weren't that far off to still justify a 3:2 ratio for greens. Off the top of my head, it's 2 copper cable per 2 seconds produced and 10 per 8 seconds consumed. So one cable maker still doesn't keep one circuit maker streaming. You could have the cable maker one tier higher than the circuit maker, but that takes more resources than one extra cable maker per two circuit makers. Am I overlooking something?

[Gus_Smedstad]

Green research is difficult because you have to use electronics, and you have to re-learn electronics factories because the ratios are different than what you knew from before.

You said this before, but when I eyeballed the ratios, they weren't that far off to still justify a 3:2 ratio for greens. Off the top of my head, it's 2 copper cable per 2 seconds produced and 10 per 8 seconds consumed. So one cable maker still doesn't keep one circuit maker streaming.

You're asking the wrong question. It used to be that the bottleneck was cables to electronics, and now it's copper plates to cables. It's also true that it's no longer 3:2, since it's 1 cable / second (base) produced vs. 1.25 consumed, which is a 1.25 : 1 ratio rather than 1.5 : 1, but that's secondary.

In the vanilla game in an electronics factory, you're focused on optimizing the copper wire transfer because the rates of production and consumption are both high. Assuming early tech (stone furnaces, level 1 assemblers) it's 1 electronic circuit in 1 second requires 3 cable, 3 cable / second, produced by machines at 2 cable / second. In Marathon, it's 10 cable in 16 seconds, or 0.625 / cable second consumed, produced at 0.5 cable / second. With volume down a factor of nearly 5, it's entirely practical to use belts for transport to fine tune wire / electronics ratios. You're not going to clog them with wire you do in vanilla.

Cable now consumes 10 copper plates in 2 seconds to produce 2 wire. That's 5 plates / second base, 2.5 / second in a level-1 assembler. Stone furnaces produce 5 plates in 6.3 seconds from 1 ore, or 0.8 plates / second. The numbers for copper plates are almost as bad as they were in vanilla for wire. Volume is high, and because the ratio of furnaces : wire assemblers is high (3.1 : 1), direct insertion is awkward, and it gets worse when you graduate to level-3 assemblers and electric furnaces (nearly 4:1). I ended with a direct insertion + belt combination system.

Furnaces to copper wire assemblers are similar ratios in vanilla, but I wasn't so aware of it because the volume was so much less, and I tended to create a central smelting facility that served everything rather than do local smelting for each assembly line.

[Boogieman14]

Yeah, I guess central smelting is one of those things you may need to reconsider. I was already running into throughput problems with 4 cable makers on a standard belt. I guess I'll look into in-situ smelting tonight. Marathon almost turns it into a new game this way

[Gus_Smedstad]

Marathon almost turns it into a new game this way

Yeah, it does! It felt remarkably fresh to me, despite a lot of time with the base game. I don't like what it does to the petroleum and module balance, but overall it was a quite positive experience.

[Afforess]

No, I didn't play in Peaceful mode. That's a relevant question, because I almost gave up on the early stages a couple of times. The biters came after me when I had nothing more than a pistol, because Marathon makes research expensive and slow. I ended up having to let biters attack my stuff several times, because I could only survive if I could shoot them while they were busy destroying things. Getting turrets, getting walls,getting heavy armor, getting piercing rounds, and getting laser turrets were all important military stages.

It was definitely a lot more challenging than vanilla, both because I had rather less technology than normal, and because when my initial resources ran out, I had to clear biter nests to get more. In the case of iron, I had to run a fairly long rail line past nests I couldn't really handle to get to a weaker nest which was blocking iron.

How much of my initial iron went to ammunition, I don't know exactly. That was a long time ago. I was using it pretty much as fast as an assembler could make it, both the basic magazines and later the piercing rounds. I still used a lot of ammunition after I got laser technology, because it took a while before I had enough lasers to mount an offense, let along create a laser defense perimeter. Making laser turrets is slow in Marathon, both making the electronics they require, and the turrets themselves.

That's a really interesting playthrough. I really like your central station there. Your experiences w/copper requirements mirror my own playthroughs of RSO/Marathon as well.

I am totally on board with nerfs to oil production / refineries / etc, there is an ongoing discussion on the matter in the Marathon thread right now, if you want to contribute.

I also agree, you can absolutely achieve no-win situations with Marathon if you get your evolution rate higher than your ability to cope with the biters. I've toyed with the idea of changing the evolution rate in Marathon but decided against it. I am tinkering with a separate biter evolution mod that might help with this aspect though.

[TuckJohn]

Could someone link me to the mod pages for this? I cant seem to find them on the forum

[joon]

Marathon:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 91&t=13567

RSO:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=79